This image captured by the Cassini spacecraft shows plumes of water ice erupting from the surface of Enceladus. Do similar plumes exist on Jupiter’s moon Europa?

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

During its mission, the Galileo spacecraft carried an instrument called the Plasma Wave Spectrometer that measures plasma waves caused by charged particles in gases around Europa’s atmosphere.

Looking again at this data, it also appears to support the theory of plumes on Europa.

“There now seem to be too many lines of evidence to dismiss plumes at Europa," says Robert Pappalardo, project scientist of the Europa Clipper mission, which will send a probe to study the moon unclose and could launch in 2022.

“This result makes the plumes seem to be much more real and, for me, is a tipping point. These are no longer uncertain blips on a faraway image."

The Europa Clipper spacecraft may fly through the plumes, just like the Cassini spacecraft did on Enceladus, and collect samples of the particles.

“If plumes exist, and we can directly sample what’s coming from the interior of Europa, then we can more easily get at whether Europa has the ingredients for life,” says Pappalardo.

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